As Chief Beckett and I raced down the highway back toward Enchanted Rock, sirens blaring and lights flashing, I reached into the pocket of my borrowed turnout coat, searching for spare water. The fear of Rebecca stuck inside her home filled my thoughts and made my heart race in fear and panic.

I didn’t find any spare water, though.

All I found was a crumpled up piece of paper that I hadn’t noticed before.

“What the fuck?” I mumbled, pulling it out of my pocket and straightening it out. I wouldn’t have normally, but it was just so strange that I’d find something like that in a pocket. I’m normally a neat and tidy guy, and never carry around a bunch of junk.

“What’s that?” Chief Beckett asked from the driver’s seat, glancing over at me.

“Keep your goddamn eyes on the road,” I said just as we crossed the five-mile marker to town. Almost there. I turned my eyes down to the paper, but all that was on there was a long web address, a string of numbers, dashes, letters, and slashes.

“Pull that out of your pocket?”

“Yeah,” I replied, looking the address over again, my eyes settling on the parent address at the very front of the string of digits and letters. “Whose turnout coat is this?”

“Uh, Derrick’s, I think.”

And then it hit me. That’s where I knew that address from. It was the same forum we’d found on Zeke Rogers’ computer, the one that had shown how to build a time-delayed arson device. The final piece of so-called evidence that had made me turn my back on an innocent man. I groaned loudly and ran a hand down my face. How could I have been so fucking stupid?

“What?” the chief asked from beside me. “What’s going on? Talk to me, Matt. What’s wrong here?”

“Derrick!” I said, holding up the paper. “Derrick is the one that’s been doing all this shit! He’s the one who framed Zeke Rogers, and he’s probably the guy who just blew up your engine!”

But why Derrick Newhouse? That just didn’t make any sense. He and Rebecca were best friends, weren’t they?

I went to pull out my phone to try and call Rebecca to tell her what I’d found, but realized I’d left my phone in my pocket back at the fire station when I’d stripped down for my turnout gear. “Son of a bitch!”

Beckett gave me a look like I’d completely lost it. Which, in all fairness, I felt like I had. He asked me one simple question: “Why Derrick?”

“I have no idea,” I said, frowning. “I hardly even know the guy. I’d looked at him early on as a suspect, but there didn’t seem any history with Zeke, just that he was friends with his goddaughter. Do you know him?”

Beckett shrugged. “Well enough, I guess. Guy grew up here, moved off, and came back after his aunt died in a car accident.”

“His aunt?”

“Yeah,” he said, laying on his horn as he wove around a little hatchback that hadn’t pulled all the way over, “his aunt. His mother, she’s stuck in a sickbed at home, and his aunt took care of her when she wasn’t substituting for the schools in the Rock. Got into an accident or something on the way in a little while back. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding along. I recalled. Mabel Owen had died last year from an accident during a snowstorm. It had been right after the case with the Russians and Frank O’Dwyer’s mate, Ashley Maxwell. “That was his aunt?”

He nodded. “I remember because I was one of the guys responding to the call. Apparently she was going into fill in for some English class or something at the high school, and her old Volvo stalled out in front of a semi-truck. Broadside sent her right over the edge and down into a gully. Dead on impact. Nothing we could do.”

“Were they close? Derrick and his aunt?”

He shrugged as he slammed on the gas. “Not that I knew of. I mean, guy hardly ever came back to town, even for holidays, from what he said.”

“Could it be about Rebecca, then? Is he in love with her or something?”

“They spend enough time together,” the chief conceded. “Been friends since forever, and she ain’t exactly rough on the eyes.”

I frowned, but didn’t respond. Right then I was thinking about her being left alone with him or her being stuck in her house as it burned down around her ears.

“Hey, do you think we should call him?” Beckett asked after a moment. “I mean, see where the hell he is?”

“You know what,” I said as Chief Beckett pulled the phone from the dash and glanced at it, “that’s not a bad idea. I’ll do the talking, though. You should probably focus on driving.”

I pulled up Derrick’s number, hit send, and stuck Beckett’s phone to the side of my head. I took a deep breath as I listened to the tone ringing in my ear.

“Chief Beckett?” Derrick asked after the third ring.

“Close,” I said. “But no cigar. Where are you, Derrick? And where’s Rebecca?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“Who the hell do you think?”

Silence.

“Couldn’t help but notice you’d been marked off the on-call list for today. Missed all the fireworks,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

More silence. Which was good. Him not speaking gave me a chance to listen in around him, to hear what was going on. It sounded like he was in a car. I couldn’t hear Rebecca, though, which might have meant she wasn’t nearby, or he had her some place nearby.

“Don’t worry, you didn’t hurt anyone. Just the chief’s pride and joy engine.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Listen, Derrick,” I said after a long pause. “I think I have an idea of what this is about.”

“Oh, do you?”

“You’re in love with Rebecca, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve been working on getting the men out of her life, men who stood between you and her.” I paused and licked my lips as I listened to the sound of his heavy breathing. “And I understand, Derrick. I really do. But it doesn’t need to go this way, man. You’re a firefighter, same as me, and we can work this out without the cops, without the courts. I’ll just let the DA release Zeke, you let Rebecca go, we chalk this up to some adolescent–” I stopped talking, though, as his laughter burbled through from the other line.

“Oh man, Matty boy, you are really fucking dense, aren’t you?” he asked with a derisive laugh. Before I could respond, though, he hung up.

I took the phone from my ear and looked down at it in disbelief. “Motherfucker!”

“What happened?”

I tossed the phone on the dash. “Just hung up on me!”

We kept cruising toward town, a thin black pillar of smoke on the east side of town guiding us the whole way. God, I hoped Rebecca was safe. If I thought for a second I could beat Chief Beckett’s drive time there, I’d have ripped off all my clothes and transformed into a wolf right there on the spot, prohibitions against entering town be damned.

“Well, what did he have to say?”

“He said I don’t understand why he’s doing this. But I’m pretty sure he does have Rebecca.” I closed my mouth, then thought back to the conversation I’d just finished. There was something there, right under my nose and on the tip of my brain that I was missing. Whatever it was, it was flying right by me, like the cars heading out of Enchanted Rock. Red cars, black cars, blue cars of all makes as the townspeople came to the defense of their volunteer firefighters.

“Think, Matthew,” I mumbled as I looked out the passenger side window at the approaching town, “think. What are you missing?”

Sheriff Peak’s SUV flew by, its engine roaring like a freight train, as it headed out to the site of the explosion. Deputy Glick’s cruiser wasn’t far behind it. We’d spoken to them when we first hopped in the car and let them know where we were headed, and to send backup trucks from Yellow Rose.

Between all the noise from the cars and from the sirens, I could hardly think straight.

And then it occurred to me what I hadn’t heard. No noise on Matthew’s side of the phone. No real noise, at least, not like you would hear with a Jeep.

“He’s in a car,” I said. “But, Chief, he’s not in his Jeep. I couldn’t hear any outside noise. He took her car, Chief.”

I thought back to the little black Honda Civic we’d just driven past on the highway, its windows tinted against the afternoon light. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but it sure did look an awful lot like Rebecca’s little sedan.

“What in the hell are you talking about, Matt?”

“Turn the truck around, Chief,” I said quickly and insistently. “Turn it around! He just passed us a few miles back! If we hurry, we can still catch him!”